


the quickest way to a man's heart is actually a stab through his chest

by carafin



Category: Gintama
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies, F/M, Mentions of Violence, Mentions of alcohol, mild swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-29
Updated: 2015-03-29
Packaged: 2018-03-20 06:21:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3640047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carafin/pseuds/carafin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Hijikata repeatedly fantasises about tendering his resignation.</p><blockquote>
  <p>The mission is a resounding success. The only problem is—</p>
  <p>‘You broke two of your ribs, had half a tooth knocked out and your neck half fractured,’ Hijikata says, scanning the report five days later. </p>
  <p>Okita nods.</p>
  <p>‘All of which were given to you by your partner,’ Hijikata continues, incredulous. He looks up at Okita, appearing uncharacteristically mind-boggled for once. ‘<i>And is that a bite mark on your arm?</i>’</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	the quickest way to a man's heart is actually a stab through his chest

**Author's Note:**

> Spy-AU. They are both aged up in this fic.

i.

The first time they meet is in an exclusive club in Milan.

The night has been long and tedious, but his winning formula consisting sweet-talking, copious amounts of alcohol, and ridiculous smouldering glances thrown at regular intervals to his companion is finally paying off. His victim for the night— the young girlfriend of General Salerno, the latter being his real target— seems to be reasonably intoxicated and hopelessly infatuated; her face is flushed scarlet, her mouth is parted slightly, and her breaths are coming out in little hitches. Okita pats himself on the back— a little prematurely, as he will soon learn— on yet another smooth mission, and decides to go straight for the kill.

‘I could get us a room,’ he whispers huskily, and feels her shiver with every syllable he breathes into her ear.

When she gazes up at him he sees fear and uneasiness lingering at the corners of her eyes— the general _is_ a powerful man after all—  even amidst the alcohol induced stupor. Okita smiles, presses his hips against her, and watches as every last bit of hesitation and resistance melts away from her face. The easy part starts now; transferring the information from her phone will be ridiculously uncomplicated once they are safe in a dingy hotel room, and with a little luck he might not even have to remove his pants.

Okita slips his arms around the waist of his prey, and is just about to leave when someone walks up to him, stops dead in their tracks, and promptly throws an entire glass of martini squarely onto his shirt.

Okita swears inwardly; the entire mission had been going far too smoothly, and he really should have anticipated this. The assaulter screeches wildly and immediately breaks into an incoherent string of what seems to be thickly accented Mandarin. It’s dark in the club and the only light source is the epilepsy-inducing strobe lights flashing on the ceiling, but Okita can briefly make out a slender young woman, and her long, red hair.

‘It’s okay,’ he tells her, but she has him in a vice grip. Okita tries to pull away and is met with surprising strength. The other girl seems to be apologising profusely, and is gesturing wildly towards the general direction of the toilet, seemingly adamant on bringing him there. Okita realises with mild alarm that she will eventually haul him over manually and rip his shirt off if he doesn’t comply, so he turns over to Salerno’s girlfriend who is currently standing with her arms akimbo, all impatient and displeased, and tells her to wait for him.

He is half-led, half-dragged to the toilet. He turns to the girl and opens his mouth to shoo her away— what he doesn’t expect is her literally shoving him into the single-cubicle toilet and slamming the door shut behind them, before turning the lock with a loud _click_.

Realisation suddenly dawns upon Okita. It isn’t the first time something like this has happened, he thinks to himself, somewhat aggrieved. It’s one of the very few drawbacks that comes with being ridiculously handsome.

‘Look, I’m sorry, but I’m really not into you,’ he begins, but the other girl ignores him completely, untucks his shirt with one rough movement, and shoves her entire arm up his shirt with a force that can rival testosterone-filled gorillas during mating season.

Okay, now this is just getting ridiculous. ‘Stop,’ he says again, but his protest is cut off as the girl produces a bugging device from underneath his shirt and slams her palms against his face in a bid to shut him up.

Now this is a plot twist.

Salerno's girlfriend must've slipped it in while they were making out; so they’ve actually been playing along. Okita curses inwardly for the second time that night. How could he have been so careless? The other girl slowly releases her hand from his mouth, and, without warning, starts to spew out a string of unintelligible Chinese mingled with random moaning noises. She raises her eyebrows at Okita, blue eyes flashing dangerously, and beckons for him to join in.

Right. They’re still being bugged.

Feeling somewhat self conscious, Okita opens his mouth and finds it in him to let out an erotic sigh, followed by a string of ‘mm yes oh yes _yes right there_.’ The girl looks at him and has the sheer _audacity_ to roll her eyes, before gesturing to the window at the top of wall, above the toilet bowl. She flips down the toilet seat, hoists herself up to the ledge with surprising grace and strength, and turns to Okita.

 _Louder_ , she mouths. _I need to remove the grills._

Okita nods and raises his voice by a few decibels, and watches as the girl reaches into her bra and, somewhat miraculously, produces a screwdriver and an assortment of other curious looking contraptions.

It takes her all of seventy seconds before the grills are detached from the window, but Okita thinks that it is sixty-nine seconds too long because he is running out of steam and his moaning now sounds dangerously like a hippopotamus being sawed into half. There is also the pertinent fact that you can only say ‘ _baby ooh baby_ ’ so many times before you start to sound dangerously like a bad pop song. The girl places the hearing bug daintily on the sink, and, with a fluid motion, slips right through the window.

Okita follows. He misgauges the distance from the window to the floor, and lands somewhat unceremoniously onto the ground. He scrambles quickly to his feet and looks around, expecting to see red hair and blue eyes, but is met with an empty alley, and the stillness of the night.

 

ii.

He learns of her name two days later.

‘Her name is Kagura, and we sent her to cover your back,’ Hijikata says by way of explanation after he'd stormed into Hijikata’s office questioning the other man about _‘that crazy China girl’._ Hijikata slips him a single black file. Volumes of thick, acrid smoke billows out from the end of his cigarette, and Okita wishes fervently that he will choke on it. ‘Her particulars are inside the file. Memorise everything and shred it up.’

Okita doesn’t need any espionage related intuition to see where this is going, and he doesn’t like it one bit. ‘And I need to know because…?’

Hijikata smiles, flashing the sharp of his teeth. Okita has a feeling that the other man probably hasn’t forgiven him for the last time he’d put laxatives into his superior’s mayonnaise sandwich. ‘You’re going as a married man for the next mission.’

 

They meet at the airport. Okita joins her at the departure gate, armed with nothing but a suitcase and a healthy, not-unfounded dose of apprehension and dread. Kagura is wearing a sweet little sundress and her hair has been twisted into an elaborate braid, but the Okita has seen enough to know that the daintiness probably ends there.

‘ _Honeypie_ ,’ she says as Okita approaches her, and Okita thinks that it's amazing how she can turn a term of endearment into something that sounds like a vulgar swear word being tossed in a dodgy back-alley. She pulls him into an embrace, although it feels more like he is being choked to death by a giant squid. Okita makes up his mind never to put laxatives into Hijikata’s sandwich ever again.

Okita Sougo is many things (heart-stopping casanova, charmer of the masses, estrogen magnet, every married man’s worst nightmare etc etc), but he is not a pushover, and so he doesn’t miss a beat when they pull apart, and plants a swift kiss onto his _wife’s_ lips. He smirks triumphantly when Kagura blinks in surprise. Two can play the game.

Kagura turns to him and, with a deliberate, scary sort of slowness, works her features into a meltingly insincere smile that says, _oh, this is_ on.

 

The mission is a resounding success. The only problem is—

‘You broke two of your ribs, had half a tooth knocked out and your neck half fractured,’ Hijikata says, scanning the report five days later.

Okita nods.

‘All of which were given to you by your partner,’ Hijikata continues, incredulous. He looks up at Okita, looking uncharacteristically mind-boggled for once. ‘And is that a _bite mark_ on your arm?’

Okita shrugs, tries to play it cool, or as cool as one can get while having half his body patched up and the other half covered in rolls of bandage. ‘I gave her two long bone fractures and a dislocated shoulder. That should make us even.’

‘Incredible,’ Hijikata says. ‘We have finally found someone who can match up to your senseless violence.’

One tiny, _miniscule_ masochistic part at the back of his brain revels at the knowledge, but Okita doesn’t betray anything except for a dismissive shrug. No one has to know.

 

iii.

The third time they meet is by actual, genuine accident.

 _‘Darling_ ,’ Kagura says, and all but flings herself onto him when they cross paths two months later in a random park. She tugs at the back of his head and lowers it in one swift motion, before pulling him into a passionate kiss that cause mothers nearby to cover the eyes of their children hastily.

‘Guy to your 9 o’ clock. Some bigshot drug dealer in the Mafia,’ she says to his lips. This never gets old; Okita thinks he really ought to hate it, but he doesn't. 

‘What a surprise,’ Okita says. ‘Guy in red, behind the fountain. Chinese spy.’

He slings his arms over Kagura and they start to make their way around the park.

‘So,’ Okita says, by way of conversation. ‘Headcount this month?’

‘Nine,’ Kagura replies proudly, and puts on her most charming smile like it’s the most natural thing in the world, like she isn’t the spawn of satan. Around them, people stare and chuckle knowingly at the ‘attractive, young couple whispering sweet nothings to each other.’

‘Twelve,’ Okita says, not bothering to keep the smugness out of his voice. ‘You’re getting soft, China.’

Kagura clasps onto his hand in a way that _definitely_ merits a visit to the doctor’s for an x-ray the next day. ‘How wonderful, _darling_ ,’ she says through clenched teeth. They’ve reached a reasonably isolated place in the park, and they’ve lost the drug dealer, but from the corner of Okita’s eyes he spots the Chinese spy closing the distance between them, followed by three other men behind him.

Kagura looks around, and, after making sure that the area is clear of civilians, drops his hands like she is nine and believes in cooties again. ‘You know,’ she says casually, pulling out a revolver from underneath her shirt, ‘I’ll pull ahead if I take all four of them out.’

Okita smiles like a demon possessed.

 

iv.

The next time they meet is four weeks later, separated by a glass panel and surrounded by white, blinding hospital walls.

Kagura is lying on the hospital bed, all subdued and quiet for once. Not that she can speak, what with being hooked up to a million wires and a row of fancy looking machines.

‘Who,’ Okita asks Hijikata, making sure to sound _real_ casual, ‘did this?’

Hijikata looks at him. It is testament to their six years of semi-dysfunctional relationship, forged out of mutual antagonism, that Hijikata scowls and slowly says, ‘I won’t let you go after them, the higher ups will kill me. It’s too dangerous.’

The next day Okita goes back to work, fuming, his mind running through a million cruel pranks that can send Hijikata, if not straight to his grave, at least into a state of utter pain and embarrassment and suffering. He opens his drawer to take out a pen, and instead finds a single black file that has been slipped in innocuously.

Well. Okita flips open the file, and makes a mental note _temporarily_ withhold the pranks, _just_ for the time being.

 

‘I can’t believe you,’ Kagura seethes a week later, when their roles are reversed and he’s lying on the bed, trying not to move so much as a hair lest his liver slips right out of the gaping, open wound on his abdomen or something. Her hair is tucked in an ugly bun and she has two large stitches on her left cheek, but the post-operative anaesthesia must be doing a manner of unspeakable things to his brain because he finds her - god forbid - almost striking.

He’s not so far gone, yet, though. Okita smiles, ignores the metallic liquid bubbling in his mouth and says with aggravating slowness, all smug gloating like he isn’t completely bed-bound and missing a quarter of his liver, ‘now I’ve pulled ahead enough to cover an entire month.’

 

v.

‘I can’t believe this,’ Hijikata says, and Okita thinks that this is _really_ getting old because it is the ninth time Hijikata has said it since he’d paired Okita up with Kagura for the first time two years ago.

‘You’ve incurred ten thousand dollars worth of damages in a restaurant in Beijing. Our target was a man living in the middle of Saudi Arabia. _What the fuck were you doing in a restaurant in Beijing_?’ Hijikata regards the bill in his hand with something akin to hysterical despair, and sounds every bit like a man who no longer has it in him to be deal with the world.

‘It was a detour. I wanted to propose to her.’

Hijikata’s cigarette falls out of his mouth with a quiet plop and sets the papers on the desk on fire within seconds. Okita swiftly grabs a jar of water nearby and puts the fire out, before throwing the remaining half-jug of water onto Hijikata’s face on second thought. You know, just in case.

‘You _proposed_ to her,’ Hijikata splutters, with nary a care for the water dripping down his face.

‘She threw a little tantrum because apparently I proposed wrongly,’ Okita says by way of explanation. It’s puzzling, really - he’d bought a ring, dragged her into a restaurant, flung said ring onto the table and proposed with something along the lines of ‘marry me, you Neanderthal’, and Kagura had reacted with somewhat unexpected rage. _Girls nowadays are getting so hard to please_ , Okita thinks to himself.

‘She said yes eventually, though,’ Okita continues, cheerfully. ‘You’ll give us unpaid leave and subsidise our wedding, won’t you? It says so in the contract.’

 

They last twenty minutes into their wedding which, for Kagura’s standards and their combined track record, is pretty impressive.

‘So, where do we go,’ Okita says, after Kagura stormed out in the middle of his vow to care for her ‘through sickness, health, and her future inevitable degeneration into a gorilla’. ‘We’re supposed to go for a honeymoon, you know.’

She turns around and looks at him, and under the soft glow of midday sun the sharp of her eyes appears to be lined with something almost tender. Almost. ‘Wherever!’

‘I hear that the thugs are pretty active in Peru at this time of the year,’ Okita begins, and Kagura yells, ‘let’s go!’

 

vi.

It takes them all of two months, sixteen combined fractures, and an obscene bill for damage-related compensation that sends Hijikata almost tendering his resignation seven times, but eventually they make it home. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i have literally zilch knowledge of all spy-things related except for my alex rider phase back when i was twelve i am so sorry


End file.
